Engaging Data

The demand for effective communication and marketing at the campus and district level has never been more urgent and educational agencies have limited resources that can be directed to these efforts. It is important that our time and energy are directed towards those communication and marketing strategies that will have the most significant impact. Through practical advice, useful examples, and detailed case studies, this book will provide a compelling case for using data to maximize school communication. Whether you are a seasoned PR pro or someone who has taken on communication as one of many duties, there will be at least one money-saving, impact-increasing idea that makes reading this book well worth your time.

An invigorating take on how community and technical colleges can center equity in fostering institutional transformation

Studies from around the world show how the social media tools of Web 2.0 are shaping engagement with cities, communities, and spaces. Web 2.0 tools, including blogs, wikis, and photo sharing and social networking sites, have made possible a more participatory Internet experience. Much of this technology is available for mobile phones, where it can be integrated with such device-specific features as sensors and GPS. From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen examines how this increasingly open, collaborative, and personalizable technology is shaping not just our social interactions but new kinds of civic engagement with cities, communities, and spaces. It offers analyses and studies from around the world that explore how the power of social technologies can be harnessed for social engagement in urban areas. Chapters by leading researchers in the emerging field of urban informatics outline the theoretical context of their inquiries, describing a new view of the city as a hybrid that merges digital and physical worlds; examine technology-aided engagement involving issues of food, the environment, and sustainability; explore the creative use of location-based mobile technology in cities from Melbourne, Australia, to Dhaka, Bangladesh; study technological innovations for improving civic engagement; and discuss design research approaches for understanding the development of sentient real-time cities, including interaction portals and robots.

Don't simply show your data—tell a story with it! Storytelling with Data teaches you the fundamentals of data visualization and how to communicate effectively with data. You'll discover the power of storytelling and the way to make data a pivotal point in your story. The lessons in this illuminative text are grounded in theory, but made accessible through numerous real-world examples—ready for immediate application to your next graph or presentation. Storytelling is not an inherent skill, especially when it comes to data visualization, and the tools at our disposal don't make it any easier. This book demonstrates how to go beyond conventional tools to reach the root of your data, and how to use your data to create an engaging, informative, compelling story. Specifically, you'll learn how to: Understand the importance of context and audience Determine the appropriate type of graph for your situation Recognize and eliminate the clutter clouding your information Direct your audience's attention to the most important parts of your data Think like a designer and utilize concepts of design in data visualization Leverage the power of storytelling to help your message resonate with your audience Together, the lessons in this book will help you turn your data into high impact visual stories that stick with your audience. Rid your world of ineffective graphs, one exploding 3D pie chart at a time. There is a story in your data—Storytelling with Data will give you the skills and power to tell it!

Increasingly the world around us is becoming ‘smart.’ From smart meters to smart production, from smart surfaces to smart grids, from smart phones to smart citizens. ‘Smart’ has become the catch-all term to indicate the advent of a charged technological shift that has been propelled by the promise of safer, more convenient and more efficient forms of living. Most architects, designers, planners and politicians seem to agree that the smart transition of cities and buildings is in full swing and inevitable. However, beyond comfort, safety and efficiency, how can ‘smart design and technologies’ assist to address current and future challenges of architecture and urbanism? Architecture and the Smart City provides an architectural perspective on the emergence of the smart city and offers a wide collection of resources for developing a better understanding of how smart architecture, smart cities and smart systems in the built environment are discussed, designed and materialized. It brings together a range of international thinkers and practitioners to discuss smart systems through four thematic sections: ‘Histories and Futures’, ‘Agency and Control’, ‘Materialities and Spaces’ and ‘Networks and Nodes’. Combined, these four thematic sections provide different perspectives into some of the most pressing issues with smart systems in the built environment. The book tackles questions related to the future of architecture and urbanism, lessons learned from global case studies and challenges related to interdisciplinary research, and critically examines what the future of buildings and cities will look like.

Privacy is a growing concern in the United States and around the world. The spread of the Internet and the seemingly boundaryless options for collecting, saving, sharing, and comparing information trigger consumer worries. Online practices of business and government agencies may present new ways to compromise privacy, and e-commerce and technologies that make a wide range of personal information available to anyone with a Web browser only begin to hint at the possibilities for inappropriate or unwarranted intrusion into our personal lives. Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age presents a comprehensive and multidisciplinary examination of privacy in the information age. It explores such important concepts as how the threats to privacy evolving, how can privacy be protected and how society can balance the interests of individuals, businesses and government in ways that promote privacy reasonably and effectively? This book seeks to raise awareness of the web of connectedness among the actions one takes and the privacy policies that are enacted, and provides a variety of tools and concepts with which debates over privacy can be more fruitfully engaged. Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age focuses on three major components affecting notions, perceptions, and expectations of privacy: technological change, societal shifts, and circumstantial discontinuities. This book will be of special interest to anyone interested in understanding why privacy issues are often so intractable.

Managing information within the enterprise has always been a vital and important task to support the day-to-day business operations and to enable analysis of that data for decision making to better manage and grow the business for improved profitability. To do all that, clearly the data must be accurate and organized so it is accessible and understandable to all who need it. That task has grown in importance as the volume of enterprise data has been growing significantly (analyst estimates of 40 - 50% growth per year are not uncommon) over the years. However, most of that data has been what we call "structured" data, which is the type that can fit neatly into rows and columns and be more easily analyzed. Now we are in the era of "big data." This significantly increases the volume of data available, but it is in a form called "unstructured" data. That is, data from sources that are not as easily organized, such as data from emails, spreadsheets, sensors, video, audio, and social media sites. There is valuable information in all that data but it calls for new processes to enable it to be analyzed. All this has brought with it a renewed and critical need to manage and organize that data with clarity of meaning, understandability, and interoperability. That is, you must be able to integrate this data when it is from within an enterprise but also importantly when it is from many different external sources. What is described here has been and is being done to varying extents. It is called "information governance." Governing this information however has proven to be challenging. But without governance, much of the data can be less useful and perhaps even used incorrectly, significantly impacting enterprise decision making. So we must also respect the needs for information security, consistency, and validity or else suffer the potential economic and legal consequences. Implementing sound governance practices needs to be an integral part of the information control in our organizations. This IBM® Redbooks® publication focuses on the building blocks of a solid governance program. It examines some familiar governance initiative scenarios, identifying how they underpin key governance initiatives, such as Master Data Management, Quality Management, Security and Privacy, and Information Lifecycle Management. IBM Information Management and Governance solutions provide a comprehensive suite to help organizations better understand and build their governance solutions. The book also identifies new and innovative approaches that are developed by IBM practice leaders that can help as you implement the foundation capabilities in your organizations.

The natural world has never been wilder—with 100 fiercely fun, curiously captivating, and amazingly adventurous maps Which nations have launched animals into space? Where are the world’s cat people? How many humans live in high-risk zones for natural disasters? How far do you have to travel to hug all fifteen of the world’s oldest trees? Where in the world do snakes live—or better yet, where can you avoid them?! Find the thought-provoking answers to these questions and many more in Wild Maps for Curious Minds. This infographic atlas of nature’s most impressive wonders and eye-popping oddities is bursting with discovery (Where’s the most remote place on Earth?), whimsical insight (Which animals have launched into space?), and startling revelations (How much forest have we destroyed?) that will change the way you see the natural world—and that celebrate our planet and the plants and animals with whom we share it.